Prosthetics

DARPA’s initiative to build a prosthetic arm that’s fully controllable via a wearer’s mind has won approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (via Verge), a key green light that will let it edge closer to wide-scale production and distribution. The next step is to find someone to build the device, and then it can start helping amputees cope with the loss of their… Read More

The Dextrus hand is the working prototype resulting from Joel Gibbard’s Open Hand Project, an open source hardware initiative that aims to lower the cost of robotic prosthetics dramatically. Dextrus is a fully-functional robotic hand, with features and capabilities similar to leading advanced prosthetics, but at a small fraction of the cost. Read More

The Department of Veterans Affairs is testing a fancy new prosthetic arm developed in conjunction with DARPA, the folks that brought us the Internet, and Deka Research, founded by Dean Kamen, creator of the Segway. Unlike a traditional rigid plastic arm, or God forbid a metal hook, the Luke Arm — a reference to Luke Skywalker’s artificial hand from Empire Strikes Back —… Read More

WETA Workshop, creators of almost everything seen in the Lord of the Rings films, have brought movie magic to real life with the creation of a prosthetic mermaid tail for a double amputee in Auckland, New Zealand. Nadya Vessey, who lost both her legs below the knee as a child, asked WETA for the tail two years ago. Recently her wish came true. Read More

Welsh company Haemair’s prosthetic lung just won UK Institution of Chemical Engineers’ Stopford Projects Award for Bioprocess Innovation.
Normally, when a patient’s lungs don’t function, the patient is put on an ECMO system, an external machine that functions like a lung. The problem with these machines is that they are pretty bulky. Haemair has made a system that is… Read More

Or something like that. This little news item is far more homegrown and far less momentous than the bionic eye we posted about some time ago, but that doesn’t make it any less interesting. For one thing, the goal is different: this woman doesn’t want sight returned to her missing eye, she just wants to be able to take pictures out of it — which makes things a hell of a… Read More

There’s really no way to describe this story without making it sound like it’s from the future. This lady, who has one of the world’s most advanced bionic arms after losing one in a motorcycle accident, has begun feeling her missing arm again.
This is nothing new in itself; phantom limb pain is an established phenomenon as old as amputation. However, this case is different… Read More

http://services.brightcove.com/services/viewer/federated_f8/452319854
The brain-machine interface is one of the next major steps in technology. I had the privilege to study Neuroscience at UCLA and can say with certainty that we’re nowhere near a practical application for a number of reasons, but the amount of brainpower being devoted to the subject is so great that we’re making… Read More

A new prosthetic hand is being tested in Germany right now that has individual movable fingers that are nimble enough to type on a keyboard. It’s also sensitive enough to pressure that one using it can pick up a styrofoam cup without crushing it, something not possible before.
It’s still in the prototype stage, but the company behind the hand, Touch Bionics, is now looking for… Read More